Mediterranean Migrant Arrivals Reach 10,584 in 2018; Deaths Reach 421

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Geneva – IOM, the UN Migration Agency, reports that 10,584 migrants and refugees have entered Europe by sea through the first nine weeks of 2018, with just over 50 per cent arriving in Italy and the remainder divided between Greece (27%), Spain (22%) and Cyprus (less than 1%). This compares with 19,824 arrivals across the region through the same period last year.

At this time in February 2016 there already were 116,005 arrivals – roughly 100,000 more than at this point this year and last.

IOM Rome’s Flavio Di Giacomo said Monday that, according to Ministry of Interior figures, 5,331 migrants have arrived by sea to Italy this year – or barely one third the figure at this time last year, when 15,759 migrant men, women and children were brought to Italy after being rescued in the waters north of Africa. Through 4 March Italy arrivals are averaging just under 85 persons per day. This compares with 227 per day in 2017 and 153 per day in 2016 (see chart below).

Di Giacomo on Monday reported that the figures above do not include the 72 survivors of a rescue operation that occurred on Saturday. Rescued by a commercial ship, Cypriot merchant vessel MV Everest, off the coast of North Africa, the survivors were transferred to the NGO Ship Aquarius which landed Tuesday (6 March) in Pozzallo.

Di Giacomo explained that among the 72 migrants brought to land there were 30 survivors of a shipwreck that caused the death of 21 people, who went lost at sea. They were travelling on a small wooden boat carrying 51 people, mainly western African nationals.

The other 42 migrants arrived in Pozzallo on the Aquarius were travelling on another boat – a dinghy – that was carrying 130 people. They were rescued by both the Cypriot commercial ship and a Libyan Coast Guard ship.

While 42 were taken on board by the MV Everest (and later transferred on the Aquarius), the rest of the migrants – about 90 – were rescued and taken on board by the Libyan Coast Guard, who are bringing them to Libya. According to some testimonies, the dinghy was carrying also the corpses of 2 babies

IOM’s Missing Migrants Project (MMP) reported Monday that deaths on the Central Mediterranean route – 316 as of 2 March – were down almost 30 per cent below their total at this same time in 2017, when 442 migrants had been counted as drowned or missing in the waters between North Africa and Italy. Moreover, the MMP Project had recorded only a single death, on 19 February this year, after a shipwreck took dozens of victims on 2 February.

IOM Athens’ Kelly Namia on Monday said that over four days ending 3 March, the Hellenic Coast Guard reported there were at least three incidents requiring search and rescue operations off the islands of Farmakonisi and Samos. The Coast Guard rescued 152 migrants and transferred them to those respective islands.
Those rescued, plus another 103 arriving on Samos brings the total number of sea arrivals to Greek territory through 3 March February to 2,908 (see chart below) – an average of 47 persons per day.

IOM Spain’s Ana Dodevska reported that total arrivals by sea in 2018 have reached 2,308 men, women and children who have been rescued in Western Mediterranean waters through 4 March.

Through nine weeks on the Mediterranean, 421 migrants are estimated to have died in 2018, compared with 521 at this time last year. Most recently, three deaths were recorded on the Western Mediterranean route between North Africa and Spain. On 3 March, two women died and one person went missing off the coast of Benzú, in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.

This year, 105 people have died in the Mediterranean when trying to reach Spain.

Worldwide, IOM’s Missing Migrants Project has recorded 684 migrant fatalities in 2018, compared with 1,000 at this time last year (see chart below).

Besides those lost on the Mediterranean, MMP recorded several deaths in Mexico. One man was hit by a train near Monterrey, Mexico on 19 February, while on 23 February a young Honduran migrant was shot by armed robbers near Tenosique, Tabasco, close to the border with Guatemala.

Additionally, MMP received data this week from the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner in Arizona, USA for January and February: the remains of 13 migrants who lost their lives crossing the US/Mexico border were recovered at different locations in Pima County in the first two months of 2018.

MMP data are compiled by IOM staff but come from a variety of sources, some of which are unofficial. To learn more about how data on missing migrants are collected, click here.